Menu app looks pretty good

[Anthony Giorgianni]

Hello All

I saw this file on Shell Extension City the other day - menuapp:
http://www.desktopapps.co.uk/index.html

Pretty interesting. It lets you create little icons that, when you click on
them, bring up an Windows Explorer view of any folder. I created a bunch of
them and put them on a small auto-hide toolbar at the top of my desktop. Now
I just click on them and can get a popdown menu for any folder (including
subfolders) that I want - one for MyDocs, another for Program Files, etc.

One note: The program has malfunctioned a couple of times on my Win98se
machine. It displays dialog boxes saying it cannot find shortcut keys or
something. But other than that, pretty neat I think.


--
Regards,
Anthony Giorgianni

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[jo]

Hello All

I saw this file on Shell Extension City the other day - menuapp:
http://www.desktopapps.co.uk/index.html

Pretty interesting. It lets you create little icons that, when you click on
them, bring up an Windows Explorer view of any folder. I created a bunch of
them and put them on a small auto-hide toolbar at the top of my desktop. Now
I just click on them and can get a popdown menu for any folder (including
subfolders) that I want - one for MyDocs, another for Program Files, etc.

One note: The program has malfunctioned a couple of times on my Win98se
machine. It displays dialog boxes saying it cannot find shortcut keys or
something. But other than that, pretty neat I think.

I had a look at this the other day. It looks like it ought to work, but
doesn't. 98SE here also. the problem I had with it is that the menus
were often lost off the bottom of the screen.
The idea is nice... 40kb standalone exe. Create shortcuts to the exe
file, pointing to a folder you want to see as a menu; I thought to use
it to see the desktop, but as I said... the menu was in a really silly
place.

Ah:

=========================

What systems are supported?

The apps are developed and tested on Windows 2000 and XP, and should
also be quite at home on Windows NT.

They should also run on Win 9X but we don't actively test on those
systems so we make no promises, but you might be OK

----------------------------------------------------

Latest Versions

10th November 2004 - menuApp version 1.02

* Improved Win9X compatibility

============================

Presumably Win9X compatibility has not been improved enough

 

[Anthony Giorgianni]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, the menus' running off the bottom was a drawback. That's why I put the
shortcuts on a very narrow toolbar at the top of my desktop. I don't know if
you noticed, but you CAN jump to any place in the menu by using a letter
key. So if the menu runs off the bottom and you need to get to "Photos" for
example, just hit "P" and it will jump down. It would be great if they could
get the menus to wrap, but that it seems would interfere with the ability
to move your cursor to an arrow to get a submenu.

Maybe it would be feasible if they could do it in rows with arrows:

Bills (submenu arrow ) Correspondence (submenu arrow)
Car stuff (submenu arrow) Dopey letters (submenu arrow)

That would be the best. But I'm happy with it so far the way it is, except
for the few times it crashed on win98 of course.


--
Regards,
Anthony Giorgianni

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[jo]

Yes, the menus' running off the bottom was a drawback.

If they simply ran off the bottom, I would not mind. The problem I see
here is that the *top* of the menu is often nearly off the bottom of the
screen; this makes it unuseable.
i.e: the basic positioning of the menus is wholly incorrect.

 

[Anthony Giorgianni]

Oh, I don't have any problem with the top of the menu. Again, that may be
because I have the shortcuts on a top toolbar I don't know. (I actually put
all the shortcuts in a folder called Menuapp in MyDocs and created a top
toolbar pointing to that.) But it's strange because I also didn't have a
problem with the top of the menu when I simply put a copy of the program or
a shortcut with start-in in a folder either. So I don't know why you're
seeing that. You're running Win98SE? By the way, the shortcuts were totally
useless when I put them on the standard bottom toolbar. Almost everything
was off the screen :O)


I also just got those warnings again: "Failed to load hotkey." That probably
because I've set those hot keys to other functions. I'm gonna play with
that.


--
Regards,
Anthony Giorgianni

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[jo]

By the way, the shortcuts were totally
useless when I put them on the standard bottom toolbar. Almost everything
was off the screen :O)

Yep. This is what I am seeing. The top of the menu seems to be
conditioned by the location of the shortcut on the screen :-(

I also just got those warnings again: "Failed to load hotkey." That probably
because I've set those hot keys to other functions. I'm gonna play with
that.

I get this too. Alt-X ... I will have set it to do something else; no
worry.

 

[Anthony Giorgianni]

I disabled the shortcut keys in the menuapp.ini file. So that should take
care of that - I hope. Sorry you're having trouble with the top menu. I'm
not seeing that at all, even if scroll the menu down. close and reopen. I
goes right to the top of the alphabetical order every time - at so far.

--
Regards,
Anthony Giorgianni

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[jo]

Oh, I don't have any problem with the top of the menu. Again, that may be
because I have the shortcuts on a top toolbar I don't know. (I actually put
all the shortcuts in a folder called Menuapp in MyDocs and created a top
toolbar pointing to that.

Yep. Strange behaviour. If the app *feels* like it is being launched
near the top of the screen the menu looks good; if it *feels* like it is
launched near the bottom it is useless.
I don't like toolbars, let alone top toolbars, but use Runfast as an app
launcher... which I position to launch bottom right - because that is
where my eyes like to travel. Menuapp launched from here is useless, but
if I move the Runfast box to the top I get a perfect launch of menuapp

Thx for your input on this. I initially dismissed the app, but launching
from the top of the screen is a perfectly acceptable workround.

Sub folders as menus is a real strength. I will play a while longer. Be
nice to get input from an XP punter. And be nice for Karen to take a
look and tell us what is happening...

Thx for your post, and your feedback.

 

[Anthony Giorgianni]

Great, good luck.

Oh, I should tell you, by the way, that I tried again launching near the
bottom of the screen (I put a shortcut in a folder and opened the folder as
close to the bottom as I could get it and then clicked on the shortcut.) It
seems like the menus that will not fit entirely on the screen open DOWNWARD
(bad). If they can fit on the entire screen, they open UPWARD (great). Must
be something that's not worked out yet in the software.

I am not using this as a replacement for a program launcher, though. I'm
using an old freeware app called Runit. And I have lots of shortcuts on a
GIANT (half-the screen wide) auto-hide toolbar that pops out from the left
side of my screen. Very handy!

Glad you found a work around. I'll keep checking in to see if an XP person
reports back.

Thx again.


--
Regards,
Anthony Giorgianni

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